I love my Jambox. What I love even more is the 20W Anker speaker that I just bought for a fifth of what the Jambox cost. And though physically a bit larger, the Anker sounds tons better. The Jambox was a fine product for its day, but the “decent sounding Bluetooth speaker” problem is now solved, and for not a lot of money.
Headsets? I dunno, are Bluetooth earpieces still a thing?
That leaves us with fitness trackers, and it doesn’t appear to me that the market for those is all that healthy. (And I’ve heard Jawbone’s quality on those was lacking.) So it seems to me that though Jawbone was innovative and had some great products that pushed the state of the art along (I’m thinking of their headset and speaker), those got commoditized and/or duplicated by others. Like many, I often have a “if only they’d...” opinion to share. In Jawbone’s case, I’m a bit stumped as to what they could have done differently.
I vastly prefer the Anker audio quality, but I ran into a situation recently where the Jambox was the only speaker that would work adequately. I purchased a Bluetooth transmitter (the model is not relevant -- all devices I tried behaved the same) that I connected to a streaming audio source (i.e., it can only send data as fast as the audio input is received). Not one modern Bluetooth speaker that I tried, Anker included, was able to play the audio without interruption. Only the Jambox was.
My working theory based on my observations of multiple speakers, most of which I returned for refund, is that an internal buffer accounts for the varying perceived connection reliability. The newer speakers were significantly quicker at beginning playing audio after establishing a Bluetooth connection (as observed unscientifically by watching the indicator on the transmitter — all connect using the same audio codec). The Jambox was the slowest by at least a factor of 4-5x. In my theory, this delay was a direct result of a larger audio buffer.
In my environment, I believe that 2.4 Ghz interference is a probable culprit. This is a fairly typical suburban neighborhood with most homes containing a dual-band Comcast wireless router. As a result, the 2.4 Ghz spectrum is very crowded, but since I cannot control the channels in use by other people and the fact that Bluetooth is frequency hopping, I can’t work around it.
I also experienced big buffers with my JAMBOX. When I try to play something that requires low latency (like a talk), it is perceivable that there is a latency between the video and the speaker.
I think that Anker has a strong brand a quality product and isn't that much more expensive than their close competitors. I will pay a bit more for their products because I TRUST them, it is a BRAND and people are fiercely loyal to it.
Jawbone? Did they ever make anything other than headsets? Were they diversified? Did any one care about their brand?
Anker is selling a commodity product and building a reputation for quality. Assuming they don't blow that I suspect that they will be able to weather a lot more than a one product company.
Headsets? I dunno, are Bluetooth earpieces still a thing?
That leaves us with fitness trackers, and it doesn’t appear to me that the market for those is all that healthy. (And I’ve heard Jawbone’s quality on those was lacking.) So it seems to me that though Jawbone was innovative and had some great products that pushed the state of the art along (I’m thinking of their headset and speaker), those got commoditized and/or duplicated by others. Like many, I often have a “if only they’d...” opinion to share. In Jawbone’s case, I’m a bit stumped as to what they could have done differently.